Sunday, July 22, 2012

Watch a 3,000-foot-wide asteroid hurtle near Earth online

Get a glimpse of the humongous asteroid as it flies by on July 22

An asteroid the length of roughly eight-and-a-half football fields will hurtle past Earth — or so we hope — on Sunday, July 22. But even though the 3,000-foot-wide asteroid is huge, you won't be able to see it with the naked eye. The good news is that you don't need to have fancy telescopes to see it fly by — you can watch the event online.

Slooh Space Camera will track the asteroid from the Canary Islands in Africa as it makes its way through the sky, and will live stream it on the internet starting at 4:30 p.m. Pacific on July 22. But if you miss the first live stream because you're out partying or are otherwise intensely analyzing our weekly bad stock photo gallery, don't worry — there's another live stream you can catch, starting up at 8 p.m. Pacific, as another telescope in Arizona tracks the asteroid as it passes by.

This huge asteroid known as AM31 was discovered in 2002, and will come within 3.2 million miles from Earth. That's almost the same distance another 1,000-foot asteroid reached last June, which also led to a flyby live stream event by the Slooh Space Camera team.

[Image credit: Asteroid near Earth via Shutterstock]

This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca